Do I really need a Business Strategy for my Shop?

Customers aren't the only things that need you to change. Sometimes your competitors force you change. If the tattoo studio is now providing ‘free consultation’, you have to provide it too. Sometimes it’s the price drops of a competitor in the market that forces you to give offers to retain your customers, though dropping prices isn't the best strategy because at the end of the day that will affect your profitability directly.

Do I really need a Business Strategy for my Shop?

Everything changes… haven’t we all heard the saying ‘the only constant is change’!You cannot avoid change, and sometimes change is necessary in order to develop the business and strike a balance of things. All we can do is believe that change is always for the better. On a less philosophical note, from a business’ point of view, it is extremely important to adapt to the ever-changing world around us in order to succeed.George Bernard Shaw said, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”.

Without changes, your business would lose its competitive edge and fail to give what clients need, because client’s needs keep changing. All the customers are well travelled or have access to the internet and know what’s new, which makes them demand those things from your services, and if you cant keep up your approach and services, you wouldn't meet the needs of what most business-owners like to call ‘a growing base of loyal customers’. If a company is able to change its products according to changing customer expectations, success can almost be guaranteed. The key word being “almost”. I would like to believe most of you’ll readers thought the key word was “success”. Well, you’ve just been punk’d!

Customers aren’t the only things that need you to change. Sometimes your competitors force you change. If the tattoo studio is now providing ‘free consultation’, you have to provide it too. Sometimes it’s the price drops of a competitor in the market that forces you to give offers to retain your customers, though dropping prices isn’t the best strategy because at the end of the day that will affect your profitability directly.

How does one compete with market prices of the services falling? You need to be innovative and very quick to react to such a situation, and dropping your prices isn’t the only thing you can do. This brings you to the reason why you need a strategy for your business.

In order for a business to sustain and succeed in the long run, it must adopt a flexible structure that can adapt to the ever-changing environment around it. There are a lot of factors to consider while preparing for such progressive developments, for example;

Are the changes in the area you operate market temporary or permanent?This could be covering just a small locality for a single outlet owner, whereas global factors could apply to a huge multinational brand. What you have to understand is that whether the shifts in the way people are doing business changing for ever or is it a temporary change which will go back to normal in sometime.What trends could be expected over the next three years?

This completely depends on whether you’re well aware of business information resources that will keep you informed of what’s coming up new, even before your competitors or others in similar industries start using / applying it.

For us, TheChairr has been a journey of change, which has been very emotional. We thought we had everything engraved in stone and every plan chalked out to the last detail. Never in our wildest dreams did we ever think that we would have to revamp our strategy. Once we started with the development of our registration process and data collection for the vendor profiles, it came to our notice that this pre-launch process had taken up most of our time. So, what to do? Delaying the launch was not even an option since we wanted to secure our first mover advantage. So we decided on something we never thought would happen, we reviewed our entire business strategy and re-planned the objectives of our phase-1 launch. Though we were very upset with this offset in our plan, it surprisingly helped us collect more data and in lesser time than we had predicted. In this way by enhancing our strategy we have also been able to find a quicker way to launch our User-Interface (UI). Thats the day we realized that nothing should be engraved in stone, one should be open to the idea of change because being rigid will just hold you back.

Having said that I have listed a few measures a company could take to keep up with the annoying-necessity that is Change

1. Have a simple goal in mind for your business; example, I want to have a revenue of 1,00,000 Rupees every month.

2. Support the simple goal with a simple strategy. A business strategy is way in which you plan to achieve the desired goals of your business. Typically it could for a period of 3 to 5 years.

3. The normal changes that businesses make in the course of their commercial life have become uncountable and they happen too quickly. As a result, you will have to think and act more quickly too, and make efforts to identify trends as well as anticipate future changes.

4. To achieve such speed and flexibility, you must concentrate on building a solid foundation for your business. People and Services. Its not important to always have the most expensive IT systems, simple processes that work well are ok too. Do make sure your finances are secure, there may be times of lull in the business where you might have to spend more than you earn just to sustain and last that period out.

5. Finally, support all of this with strong and decisive management. Research and network with people in and outside your industry. Knowledge and experience is the best doctor to business problems, it has to of course be supported by great execution.Hope all of you have grasped the essence of this blog. We’ll be happy to respond to any questions, just leave a comment on the right panel and our experts will get in touch with you.

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Comments

Nice article ...if i may add Sun Tzu's art of war opine "know thy terrain" smply puts how strategy must be used in marketing a business or the art of business itself with similar maxim as you've mentioned above such as :-Capture your market without destroying it.-Avoid your competitor’s strength, and attack their weakness-Use foreknowledge & deception to maximize the power of business intelligence- Use speed and preparation to swiftly overcome the competition.-Use alliances and strategic control points in the industry to “shape” your opponents and make them conform to your will.-Develop your character as a leader to maximize the potential of your employees.